Descript

Descript Review: Edit Video By Editing the Transcript

Descript's core innovation is inverting the video editing paradigm: instead of a timeline of clips, the editing interface is the text transcript. Cutting a sentence in the transcript removes the corresponding video and audio. Moving a paragraph moves the spoken section. For editors who think in language rather than timecode, this is a fundamentally more intuitive approach.

Text-Based Editing

Descript automatically transcribes imported video and audio with high accuracy. The transcript becomes the primary editing surface — corrections, cuts, and rearrangements are made in the text, and the video reflects the changes in real time. Filler words (um, uh, like, you know) are detected and can be bulk-removed with a single click. This collapses the editing workflow for talking-head, interview, and lecture content from hours to minutes for non-editors.

Overdub Voice Cloning

Descript's Overdub creates a voice clone from a short recording of the speaker. When a word is misspoken or a sentence needs updating, the user types the corrected text and Overdub generates the audio in the speaker's cloned voice — inserted into the video seamlessly. For courses and tutorials where re-recording a single incorrect sentence would require setting up a recording environment, Overdub provides an immediate correction path.

Studio Sound

Descript's Studio Sound AI processes recorded audio to remove background noise, balance levels, reduce reverb, and produce broadcast-quality output from recordings made on laptop microphones or in imperfect acoustic environments. The output quality difference before and after Studio Sound processing is consistently significant for low-end recording setups.

Score: 7.9/10 — Best AI video editor for transcript-based post-production; not a generative video creation tool.